Fired Minneapolis reporter says his gay joke was irresponsible

By AMY CARLSON GUSTAFON, Pioneer Press

Friday, April 5, 2013

What started out as a joke ended up with a reporter being fired at KSTP-TV.

Mark Saxenmeyer wanted to do story about a gay Minneapolis couple who attended a White House Easter egg hunt but ended up handing it off to his co-worker Katherine Johnson. While she was in the process of writing the piece, Saxenmeyer added a few things to her script to make her laugh.

“They were based on a conversation she and I had prior about sensitivity issues,” said Saxenmeyer, who is gay. “As a gay person, it’s sometimes easier to use humor to help people feel more comfortable with gay people or just gay things. She and I were just having a conversation about questions she might ask when she did the story. It was just a casual conversation, and then we began joking about it.”

All the jokes were deleted, except for one of Saxenmeyer’s lines -- “big HOMO dads” -- which made it into the story that was posted on the station’s website March 30.

Saxenmeyer said the piece was up for less than five minutes before the line was taken out, but by then, a reader had already questioned the inappropriate reference to the couple. This editor’s note was added: “Earlier today comments were published erroneously regarding this story. KSTP does not condone the comments. Action is being taken to ensure that this does not happen again.”

On Wednesday, April 3, Saxenmeyer was fired from KSTP.

“I take responsibility for it,” said Saxenmeyer, who grew up in Bloomington and had been a reporter in Chicago before coming to KSTP a year and a half ago. “It was wrong. It was stupid. It was irresponsible.”

He says he never meant to offend or hurt anyone.

“I just assumed it was going to be deleted,” he said. “It was not meant to be insulting or disparaging to anyone in the gay community. It was simply meant to be funny between this reporter and me given our previous conversation. Out of context, it wasn’t funny. It looked odd and inappropriate and clearly didn’t belong there.”

Saxenmeyer said he felt terrible about the mistake and letting down KSTP news director Lindsay Radford and assistant news director Anne Wittenborg. He said he understands why he was fired.

“I think they have to maintain the integrity of the product,” he said. “And when the product is in any way jeopardized, they have to stand firm on that. And I understand that.”

Radford said the editor’s note was added to indicate the joke was “not a station mentality.”

“We’re disappointed it happened, but we’re also disappointed it had to result in us losing a valuable employee,” Radford said.

Amy Carlson Gustafson can be reached at 651-228-5561. Follow her at twitter.com/amygustafson.